The present disclosure relates to techniques for collecting information from a user.
Existing software programs often collect information either directly or indirectly from users. For example, in existing income-tax programs, which facilitate income-tax preparation, a user may provide income-tax information from forms (such as a W-2 form) by typing it in manually. Alternatively, the user may provide credential information (such as a user name and password) that allows the income-tax information to be downloaded from a payroll company's server. However, this indirect collection technique is not available for many users.
Manually providing income-tax information is a time-consuming and laborious process. Furthermore, because users don't know which data on a given form is relevant, they often provide all the information on the form, which results in wasted effort. In addition, manually provided income-tax information often contains errors that can cause mistakes in users' income-tax returns. However, requiring users to validate all of the data they have provided (such as all of the fields in a W-2 form) is also a time-consuming and laborious process, and the user may not detect all of the errors.
As a consequence, manual entry of information can adversely impact the user experience, and can result in errors. Consequently, manual entry can reduce: customer satisfaction, customer retention, and sales of software programs.